Month: July 2007

Getting your glasses ‘beer clean’

Boston Lager glassThe specially designed Samuel Adams beer glass is back in the news – because Boston Beer has shipped thousands free to subscribers of Beer Advocate and All About Beer magazines as well as American Homebrewers Association members

So that gives me a chance to add something missing from the first review: The new glass is hard to get “beer clean.” It might make you think those complaining about the unusual shape have a point.

And yes, “beer clean” is an actual term in the bar and restaurant industry vocabulary. (Something I wrote about in Real Beer’s Beer Break newsletter back in the day.)

If you haven’t already noticed the difference a clean glass makes, try this. Drink a glass of milk from a glass you don’t intend to use to serve beer. Wash it out a few minutes with hot water (no soap). Pour a beer. Is that the head you are used to seeing? The Belgian lace?

Now wash the glass with soap. Pour another beer. Same problem? Soap film can be just as nasty a villain as other residue. Now wash the glass with baking soda. Pour another beer. This one probably looks better.

Detergents may contain various fats or glycerin, which is why you are better off using baking soda. Another choice is dishwasher detergent (and then maybe baking soda).

This is easier if you designate glasses only for beer – beside milk looks a little strange in the Trappist goblet. After washing them let the glasses air dry in a dish rack. If water droplets cling to a glass or if spots show while drying, then the glass is not clean. Wash it again.

Beer by the numbers: Bad idea

Cheers to Don Russell, who this week asks why we need a score to choose a beer. The headline: 100-point scale for beer ratings a rank idea.

Specifically, he writes about Pislner Urquell hanging an advertisement on its bottle necks declaring it the world’s “highest-rated pilsner.” That according to the Beverage Tasting Institute, the same guys who sparked the Anheuser-Busch vs. Capital Brewery silliness.)

Russell doesn’t like ratings based on a 100-point scale taken from wine, because:

– They’re unneeded.
– They’re inflationary.
– They’re anti-beer.

On the last count he writes:

The mere process of rating wine, in which a few experts – whose standards do not reflect the masses – influence the marketplace, is elitist and autocratic.

Beer is democratic by nature and should reject any high-handed incursion by taste-makers who insist they know better.

Russell gives Jerald O’Kennard, who runs the Beverage Tasting Institute, a chance to speak up for using the 100-point scale. And I know first hand that consumers like the ratings. They are one of the most popular features in All About Beer magazine, which I write for regularly.

No arguing that people like numbers and use them. So they good or bad for small breweries?

This is an area where we can look to wine, because the 100-point scale has been debated far longer. And since I’m biased I suggest you check out an essay by W.R. Tish: Ten Reasons We All Lose When Numbers Dominate the Marketplace.

Most of the time you could just plug in beer when he writes wine and the sentences make perfect sense.

Try it with his final point: “We are living in the Golden Age of wine; quality and selection of bottlings available in the US are both unprecedented. If we all stop slinging numbers around so frequently, more people would be able to enjoy this Golden Age.”

Miller promotes ‘The Craft’

Miller beer musicMiller Genuine Draft is partnering with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to sponsor music artist interviews and performances. The series is called “The Craft,” which should get the attention of small breweries, and particularly their fans, who figure the word craft belongs to them.

“The Craft” series of interviews, developed in conjunction with promotional agency Arc and executed by GMR Worldwide and digital agency Digitas, aims to explore the experiences that shaped the songs written by popular musicians. (The Craft refers both to songwriting and brewing beer.)

“People got the connection between making music and making beer,” said Jonathan Sickinger, associate manager for sports and entertainment marketing at Miller. “And they wanted to know more about both.”

For years we’ve appreciated that Miller supports live music. I’ve got a poster of Terence Simeon from an MGD-sponsored tour above where I store grain for homebrewing.

But I also know when you ask “What is craft beer?” you get passionate responses. Witness the 67 comments at Seen Through a Glass or a shorter discussion here. No need to revisit that topic.

Instead a short story from Tony Simmons of Pagosa Springs Brewing that I used in the little essay about if your brewer is an artist.

Simmons was once in a class at Siebel Institute with a woman who worked at Miller Brewing. Out of curiosity, not intent, he asked her what it would take for him to get a job brewing at Miller.

“You couldn’t,” she told him. “We hire engineers and train them to brew our way.”

So you think that is the way a great guitar player interviews drummers?

New Beer Rule #5: It is only beer

Credit for this one goes to Don Younger, publican of the Horse Brass Pub in Portland.

Exhibit A: Last week’s Session, in which the guys at Hop Talk challenged bloggers to write about atmosphere. We’re talking about dozens of folks who take the time to write about beer several times a week.

And what did they focus on?

Early on, it became quite clear that there was a nearly universal theme as to what made for a good beer drinking atmosphere: people.

Exhibit B: Don Younger and the Horse Brass Pub. Now we’re talking people.

There are various stories about how Younger acquired the Horse Brass, but what’s certain is that it wasn’t until after he owned it that he decided to find out just what an English pub was. So he headed to Great Britain in 1977. “That’s when I knew,” he said. What, he wasn’t yet sure, “but I was going to do the pub thing.”

Fast forward to 1995, the evening of the last day of the Oregon Brewers Festival. We had arrived in town before the festival started, and spent an intense several days visiting pubs and brewpubs in the metropolitan area, some with Don and many more he suggested. He talked about influences, about history, about Oregon brewers (some gone), about pubs. Several times over.

We didn’t expect to see him at the Horse Brass that evening. We’d just stopped by for one last pint before leaving town. But he showed up at our table and had a seat. Soon it seemed half the people in the pub had stopped by and the conversation naturally centered on beer. What do you think of Portland’s bars? The brewpubs? What beers did you try at the festival?

Then at one moment Younger leaned back in his chair and smiled. You could see him almost eavesdropping on scores of conversations taking place around him, most of them not about beer.

“After all,” he said, “it is only beer.”

How’s that for perspective?

Session #6 announced: Fruit beers

The SessionGreg Clow has made the call and the theme for the next session, Aug. 3, is Fruit Beer.

Aside from the stipulation that it be a beer brewed/augmented with fruit (or fruit juice or extract), there are no other rules or guidelines. Anything is fair game, from a tart and funky Kriek or Framboise, to a sugar-laden “lambic”, to a Blueberry Wheat or Raspberry Ale from your local brewpub.

We’ll be in Massachusetts on that Friday, so I don’t know if I’ll wait and go for something local and fresh – you’ll be thinking that way after you read how Greg settled on the theme – or with an old favorite.